1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the remote control of household appliances, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for remotely controlling household appliances, wherein a household appliance user can control and monitor the household appliances in his or her home from a remote place outside of the home.
The present invention further relates to an apparatus and method for remotely controlling household appliances, wherein the household appliances are assigned Internet protocol (IP) addresses over the Internet in a simple manner so that they can be readily remotely controlled via the Internet.
The present invention further relates to an apparatus and method for remotely controlling household appliances, wherein a user can control the household appliances using a mobile terminal while in motion as well as using the Internet and a home network.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is common practice that household appliances are set to perform only functions suitable for their respective purposes independently of the other appliances. Recently, techniques associated with the remote control of household appliances by a user have been developed continuously.
It is common that the remote control of household appliances is carried out through wired/wireless communication means. This generalized remote control technique is disadvantageous in that a user cannot recognize the current state of each household appliance and help operating each appliance one-sidedly.
In order to overcome such problems, a variety of efforts have recently been made to control household appliances in a wired or wireless communication manner using the Internet and communication equipment being rapidly developed.
The Internet was initially used for military and scientific purposes by a limited number of specialists. Thereafter, owing to the development of techniques related to the Internet and the easier access to the Internet, the number of Internet users has continuously increased, so the Internet related techniques have been rapidly developed. The Internet is currently used in a variety of fields, such as education, economic activities, information acquisition, etc., all over the world.
However, for connection of household appliances to the Internet, a variety of equipment must be installed and maintained at a great cost. For example, a plurality of household appliances must be assigned IP addresses for access to the Internet. To this end, a skilled user is required to perform a sequence of operations to manage each household appliance and initially assign it an IP address.
Moreover, in case of controlling household appliances using the Internet or communication equipment, a user, from a remote place outside of his or her home, cannot recognize information about the operation and other conditions of each of the household appliances and thus check such conditions.
In other words, a user can check all conditions of household appliances controllable via the Internet only after personally moving to a space in his or her home where each of the household appliances or a personal computer (PC) capable of controlling it is located, thereby actually giving no great convenience to the user.